You may not associate live comedy with tales of learning to love oneself and overcoming adversity. But standup is no stranger to redemption these days, and rookies – such as 23-year-old Lauren Pattison – make it their narrative structure of first resort. With her debut show, the Geordie newcomer recounts her 2016 annus horribilis. Not just dumped but “ghosted” by her boyfriend, she struggled to adjust to new life in London – insecure, depressed, blaming herself for the relationship breakdown. Lady Muck traces her route to refreshed confidence, via online dating, an encounter with a sexist comedy fan, and a bilious episode in a supermarket aisle.

Sometimes, it’s more inspiring tale-of-empowerment than comedy show – particularly in the closing stages, which Pattison delivers while choking back tears. Mostly, it stays sprightly and drolly direct, as she relates multiple tales of awkward behaviour while drunk and awkward behaviour while sober. Some of that awkwardness derives from her class background: she’s more aspirational than the girls she grew up with, but too vulgar (she claims) for audiences down south. But there are deeper-seated explanations, soon revealed, for why Pattison continues to feel “uncomfortable in her own skin”.

It’s not all about herself: an early section dotes on her six-year-old nephew. Which is entertaining, but the mild joke about his deafness that ends the skit cannot bear the weight of the rant about offence-taking that follows. That’s one of several moments when I wished Pattison would dwell less on herself as a comedian and on the show as a show – it being counterproductive to deconstruct something before it’s been constructed.

She even suggests the quest that supplies Lady Muck’s narrative spine – to quiz her ex about her failings as a girlfriend – was undertaken mainly to generate a good hour for the Edinburgh fringe. It worked: Pattison was shortlisted for the festival’s best newcomer award. But her show is better when focused less on its own creation than on the battle between Pattison’s brittle self-confidence and her bullish determination to transcend it.

How that conflict unfolds, finally, isn’t very surprising. We’ve travelled this arc of self-realisation before, and when Pattison is throwing herself in emotional harm’s way in the first half hour, it’s clear how things are likely to end. You may, equally, find the show’s “believe in yourself” clarion call a bit conventional. In the opening stages Pattison expresses the anxiety that to make a show about learning to love oneself would be boring.

Hers isn’t – because she brings depth of feeling to bear on it, and no little quality as a genial raconteur and cracker of occasional fine jokes. There’s the adroit rug-pull at the end of her dialogue with the chauvinist fan, say, or the remark about swigging prosecco on the bus “as an amuse-bouche”. Others are more obviously the work of a comic still learning her craft: the analogies used to illustrate annoyance when a man patronises her feel schematic, and add little to the irritation she’s already expressed. But Lady Muck remains an eye-catching debut, a portrait of the artist as a young woman, rallying her confidence on stage and off.